Stop chasing tech cults and start growing rooted alternatives

#Musk is a useful example of the #nastyfew: wealthy technocrats wrapping themselves in the cloak of progress while undermining the foundations of any, let alone a just future. These stories and narratives about innovation are a high-tech rebrand of green capitalism, a slick façade masking the same old decaying systems of extraction, inequality, and authoritarianism.

The problem they push is that instead of confronting the #KISS causes of our social and planetary crises, these people offer us distraction: electric cars for the elitists, fantasies of Mars colonies, and #AI overlords dressed up as saviours. This isn’t transformation – it’s #deathcult worshiping continuity in crisis.

People like Musk are useful to the #deathcult because they peddle a seductive, market-friendly myth: that we don’t need to change our behaviour, our economics, or our power structures, we just need to upgrade our tech. Comforting, isn’t it? For those who benefit from the status quo, it’s the perfect nasty con.

He personally embodies the worst of the #geekproblem: the cult of the engineer, disconnected from social reality, obsessed with “fixing” the world through code and hardware while ignoring the human systems that create the problems in the first place. This is dead libertarian ideology dressed in the shrowed of innovation.

We urgently need to compost these myths. Not just resist them, actively decompose them, mix them with grounded knowledge, and grow something better from this soil.

That’s where projects like the #OMN (Open Media Network) come in – a project seeded in the messy, composted soil of decades of grassroots media and digital commons. Unlike the sleek towers of technocratic illusion, #OMN is rooted in public-first values: transparency, participation, autonomy, and trust. It’s not about building new silos or chasing the next unicorn, it’s about connecting the islands of resistance, amplifying local grassroots voices to rebuild public infrastructure for storytelling, organising, and governance.

The #OMN isn’t anti-tech – it’s pro-human. It’s a network built with people, for people – not for investors or ego-driven billionaires. It draws from the radical legacy of projects like #indymediaback, and threads in tools like #OGB to bring coherence and shared narrative to the fractured #openweb reboot. So please stop chasing tech cults and start growing rooted alternatives.

The #OMN isn’t just about media, it’s about building the social soil

We need to keep highlighting an old but still urgent tension: the intersection of technology and social change. In this too often unspoken divide, one side leans heavily on practical, technical problem-solving. They want working code, functioning systems, and tangible results, not abstract debates. To them, critiques about capitalism shaping code sound like distractions from the “real work.” The other side insists that technical problems are social problems. They argue that all code is written by people, shaped by culture, power, and history. Ignoring the social dynamics behind technology guarantees we repeat the same failures.

This divide plays out constantly in movements trying to bridge the worlds of #AltTech and social transformation. You see it in tensions between the tech-focused “geek” communities and broader #mainstreaming society. And both sides have blind spots.

The geek camp often falls into the #geekproblem: over-prioritizing tech innovation while ignoring the human and social context. Meanwhile, the #mainstreaming crowd tends to embrace vague social ideals while underestimating the soft power – and necessity – of building real technical infrastructure to support those ideals. Neither side alone can solve anything meaningful, especially not something as vast as rebooting the #openweb or to even start to touch on #climatechaos.

We need bridges, that’s what projects like the #OMN (Open Media Network), #OGB, #IndymediaBack, and #MakingHistory are about: building trust-based, grounded, people-powered platforms that can span the divide between tech and society.

But let’s be honest, there’s a lot of very bad behaviour on all sides of the #openweb reboot. Blocking progress, gatekeeping, aggression, virtue signalling… it’s all too common. Let’s try not to become prats, it’s easy to start, and hard to stop. Mess breeds more mess, prat-ish behaviour comes in waves. It aligns with waves of #mainstreaming and the reactive “alt” backlash, these tides bring a lot of flotsam, it’s up to us to shovel and compost what we can.

Our biggest block right now? The culture war postmodernist fog that has drifted through radical spaces over the past decades. It’s slippery, full of “common sense” that doesn’t hold up, but hard to challenge because it feels right. Composting this will be difficult, but necessary.

The #Fediverse is built on people-to-people relationships. Trust, not just tech, is the foundation. That’s why there’s a healthy pushback against “tech fixes” that try to replace social trust, a path that is much more common in places like #Nostr and #Bluesky, where algorithms and cryptography are too often seen as the solution to everything.

Yes, in reality, we need a balance of both. The debate is fluffy in places, spiky in others. But if we build tech-bridges to span this messy social terrain, we might actually get somewhere. This brings us to the hard green question: how do you scale local, eco-conscious solutions to a disinterested – and sometimes hostile – global population? Green progressives often promote small-scale, ethical living. That’s great for the 1% who can afford to live that way. But what about the other 99%?

Let’s be blunt: some people will die from #climatechaos. Maybe 9%, maybe more. But 90% will still be here, and they will need different kinds of solutions. Right now, the options on the table look like this: A rebooted, green-infused social democracy (the old Corbyn project was an example). A slide into eco-fascism and top-down “solutions” (the Trump path). Or doing nothing, and let #climatechaos run wild (the current #mainstreaming).

One thing is likely, a wartime economy is coming within 20 years, where there’s will be little room for the last 40 years of #neoliberalism, and “soft” liberalism will likely play a secondary role at best, the political landscape is shifting fast. The new #mainstreaming question is which side will you be on?

Because we need more than clean branding and good vibes – we need bold, practical, radical action rooted in both tech and human trust. We don’t just need freedom from the state and the #dotcons – We need freedom from our own dogmas.

The #OMN isn’t just about media, it’s about building the social soil where openness can grow, thrive, and renew. We need compost, and not just as a metaphor.

The #OMN View – The Dogma of Anti-Dogma: Rainbow Gatherings

We need to talk about a circler familiar mess: when movements that are open, non-hierarchical, and anti-authoritarian end up recreating the problems they set out to escape. This is the “dogma of anti-dogma”, and you see it everywhere, the example I am using here is in groups like the Rainbow Gatherings.

The Rainbow Gatherings have deep roots in 1970s counterculture. Born from the peace and ecology movements, it emerged with a back-to-the-land, anti-establishment, peace-and-love spirit. Think spiritual communes, consensus meetings, and gatherings deep in the forest – far from the control of the state or system. Sound familiar? It mirrors much of “native” internet culture and resonates strongly with what we’re trying to grow through the #openweb today, in projects like the #OMN.

In the 50-year history of Gathering’s, there are no leaders, no money, no official permissions. People just show up. Communal kitchens are built, spaces are created for kids, elders, ceremonies, workshops. At the heart is the “Open Centre,” where anyone can speak, sing, or simply be. It’s grassroots in its purest form. When it balances, it becomes a lived example of radical inclusivity and cooperation. But as in any movement, issues emerge, beneath the surface freedom lie 50 years of mythos and informal traditions shaping this nomadic utopia.

This openness recurringly becomes a tangled mess for more vertical-minded people. While there’s no formal leadership, some long-timers – “elders” of any age – naturally hold more sway. And while there are no written laws, there’s a strong social tradition to follow certain paths and perform a kind of functional “openness.” When more #mainstreaming folks arrive and try to “suggest” (read: impose) better structures or force their way into consensus processes, the friction can soon become dysfunction. Often, after creating much mess, their well-meaning input ends up having to be set aside, in #OMN terms #rolledback.

Balancing this is active openness – it’s about pushing back against #mainstreaming orthodoxy being imposed without consent, without care. That tension mirrors what we’ve seen again and again in #mainstreaming “horizontal” movements, from Occupy camps to DIY tech spaces to alt-social networks. The desire to avoid hierarchy doesn’t eliminate power – but in a recurring circle it risks making it invisible. The problem isn’t structure itself, it’s unaccountable structure.

With the #OMN (Open Media Network), we face this contradiction head-on. We draw on the “native” mythos of the #4opens – Open Data, Open Source, Open Standards, Open Process – as living traditions. Not just to #KISS build tools and platforms, but to build trust networks. We’re not pretending hierarchy doesn’t exist. We aim to make it visible, accountable, and, crucially, temporary. It’s not only about flattening decision-making, but ensuring it flows through real human relationships, not hidden power or #geekproblem black-box tech.

Rainbow Gatherings walk a nomadic path, grounded in mutual care, shared meals, and rich social ritual. When we reboot the #openweb, we have to learn from that. Radical inclusivity isn’t just about keeping the doors open – it’s about building shared social mythos and working traditions. And it’s about staying alert to how exclusion creeps back in: through silence, through pressure, and often through the #mainstreaming crowd who refuse to let go.

Movements need memory, they need culture, but they also need self-awareness and space for dissent – space to reflect on the paths we’re walking together. A better #Fediverse, a real #openweb, has to be built by communities that can see their own shadows, name their own contradictions, and keep evolving together.

Because we don’t just need freedom from the state or the #dotcons. We need freedom from our own dogmas. The #OMN isn’t only about media, it’s about building the social tech, the soil where openness can grow, thrive, and renew. And it needs compost – not just as metaphor.

#OMN #4opens #RainbowGathering #OpenWeb #AltTech #ActivistTech #Dogma #AntiDogma #IndymediaBack #TrustNetworks #MakeHistory #Fediverse

Mythos and traditions are needed for revolutions to grow roots

Why Tech Belongs in the Open

In activist tech, it’s not the code that makes the project – it’s the people. And if we want the Open Media Network (#OMN) to work, we need to remember that how we build is just as important as what we build.

The problem with encrypted chats, let’s get this clear: encrypted chat is great for security. But it’s a terrible place to build a shared, open, activist codebase. If you’re talking tech in a closed chat, it might feel like you’re doing the work – but it’s invisible to everyone else. There’s no transparency, no documentation, and no way for others to join in or pick up where you left off.

This kind of siloed development culture is how the #geekproblem takes root: insular, opaque, and ultimately unsustainable. If we want to compost that mess, we have to actively grow something different. A horizontal way of working, the #4opens are our compass:

Open code

Open data

Open standards

Open process

This isn’t simple idealism, it’s a practical path to building something that lasts, something that others can join, learn from, remix, and maintain. The kind of network that doesn’t rely on a few experts in a locked chatroom, but instead thrives through collective stewardship.

The left path of change and challenge

So we need to keep dev off encrypted chat, move our contributions, bugs, ideas, and discussions to the shared dev spaces – the issue tracker, the wiki, the public logs. THEN, if you must, link to it from chat. That way, chat stays a bridge, not a black hole.

“The Less We Do Here, The More We Do There” We say this a lot because it matters, the more energy we pour into open, accessible spaces – the more likely this project grows roots. The more we retreat to fast, disposable chat threads, the more fragile it all becomes. We need shared visibility, clear documentation, and trust in messy, collective process. That’s how the #OMN becomes real, not just as software, but as a living, growing network of trust.

Let’s keep our tech open, let’s keep our process visible, let’s build the #OMN the way we want the world to work.

http://unite.openworlds.info
http://opencollective.com/open-media-network
http://hamishcampbell.com

We need to compost lies, to build #4opens horizontal networks

We are now past the point where the #mainstreaming crew have effectively given up on mediating #climatechaos. What we’re seeing now is ONLY the performance of action – flashy, expensive, technocratic distraction designed to keep business-as-usual afloat a little longer. It’s no not about preventing catastrophe, or even mediating catastrophe, what we have now is managed #PR and keeping in place elitist continuity as this small #nastyfew and their sycophants visibly retreat from the growing mess.

Solutions? Take this example: https://heimildin.is/grein/24581/climeworks-capture-fails-to-cover-its-own-emissions/ Climeworks, a flagship carbon-capture initiative, is so inefficient it fails in offsetting its own emissions. This is the #techshit path they’re backing to get us through the next few centuries? This is beyond a mess, it’s ideological collapse. These fake solutions are the logical outcome of continuing with #mainstreaming #neoliberal ideology, where systemic change and thus challenge is avoided at all costs, and techno-fixes are sold to us by #PR as silver bullets, the #deathcult in action, profit-driven stalling wrapped in light green branding.

Let’s be clear on this: Carbon capture is currently not scalable, not ethical, and not even functional. It is not a climate solution – what it is, is a delay tactic, a hedge for polluting industries. It’s backed by the same #nastyfew class of institutions that told us markets would fix inequality, that endless growth was compatible with ecology, that privatization would bring prosperity. The truth is simple, they, the #nastyfew we keep putting into power, have no real plan. They are playing at engineering the social and ecological collapse while, at this final stage, simply pretending to be managing it.

So what do we do? We #KISS hard stop trusting in any elitist-managed futures. We collectively refuse to be spectators in the mess of the current # mainstreaming path. Instead, we compost these lies and build #4opens, rooted, local, horizontal networks of resistance and renewal. Projects like the #OMN (Open Media Network) don’t pretend to “solve” everything, but they create space for people to act together, share knowledge, mediate and hold power to account, and thus build trust outside the collapsing verticals.

This isn’t about hope in the abstract, it’s about practical solidarity in the spreading ruins. No one is coming to save us, but maybe we can still save each other. Let’s build the seeds of the next world, before this one burns everything down around us.

For an alt #mainstreaming view

OMN, best not to get distracted, this isn’t about purity, it’s about direction

Composting the fiendly enemy

OMN, best not to get distracted, this isn’t about purity, it’s about direction

The current wave of #deathcult #mainstreaming of the hard right and “progressive” liberal left is less about progress and more about manipulating the human condition. It doesn’t offer real solutions, what it does do is pushes pacifiers. We live in a world where “common sense” alienation, loneliness, and meaninglessness are manufactured at scale, then sold back to us as control wrapped in empty promises.

Porn is loneliness sold as sex.

Alcohol is escape sold as fun.

Fast food is poison sold as nourishment.

Luxuries are emptiness sold as joy.

Video games are isolation sold as play.

Celebrities are ads sold as role models.

Drugs are numbness sold as happiness.

Social media is likes sold as friendship.

Smoking is addiction sold as relaxation.

Scrolling is distraction sold as downtime.

From the #dotcons

What we’re living through is not simply cultural and ecological decline, it’s the path of the #deathcult, replacing community with consumption, meaning with metrics, and connection with control. This cheap selfishness is the Trojan horse of modern misery. A social drug pushing, dopamine economy, engineered to keep us distracted, unfocused, passive, docile, and obedient, while the real decisions are made elsewhere, by the #nastyfew, elitists, institutions, and algorithms that grow and thrive on our social disconnection.

Where’s the path out of this mess? It’s not always easy, but it is possible. We compost the mess, not by withdrawing completely, but by rebuilding and bridging grounded alternatives – local, collective, messy, real. The #OMN (Open Media Network) is one such seed: a framework for reclaiming media, meaning, and mutual aid from the commodified hellscape of the #closedweb.

To step away from this mess, we don’t need more #dotcons platforms that capture our attention, we need native #openweb spaces that grow humanist trust. We need to re-learn how to talk, disagree, and create together without constantly being sold something in the process.

Best not to get distracted, this isn’t about purity, it’s about direction. When we shift the default away from commodification and toward community, we begin to detox from the #stupidindividualism trap we live in. We can begin to see more clearly, and from there, we build a different kind of world, not based on manipulation, but on meaning.

Let’s start, you need a shovel #OMN

Composting the fiendlyenemy’s

Composting the fiendlyenemy’s

These people are hopeless, in the literal sense of not having any hope.

The #mainstreaming of the #Fediverse is happening. You can see it in many “progressive” info flows, where the chattering classes of tech – academics, #NGO staffers, consultants, and developers with foundations or startup ties – gather to shape the narrative. On the surface, this looks like success: the native grassroots #openweb is being taken seriously. But look a little deeper, and the cracks start to show.

These are the #friendlyenemy – people who share some values, but whose institutional positions and funding streams push them toward compromise. On a good day, they’re allies. On a bad day, they become gatekeepers, smoothing out the radical edge of the #Fediverse in favour of comfort, control, and incrementalism.

You can smell the vertical path creeping in – softly, but persistently. Some voices are given more weight than others. Those who have access to money, credentials, or “platform” get to define the agenda. Those who don’t are politely sidelined. This inequality, dressed up in professional polish and well-meaning governance processes, is not native to the #openweb – it belongs to the broader culture of common sense #neoliberalism that says, quietly but firmly, “power follows money.”

One of the central issues here is signal-to-noise. These folks will acknowledge it if you ask, that real community voices are harder to hear, that grassroots actors are often overlooked, but in practice, they do little to shift the balance. The very structures they rely on (panels, funding calls, curated spaces) reproduce the same inequalities we’re trying to escape.

The “chattering classes” are not a new problem. In every progressive movement, there is a class of well-spoken, well-educated, well-funded individuals who dominate discourse without doing much of the risky, grounded work needed for real change. They often co-opt language, soften radical ideas, and set up systems that make it harder – not easier – for grassroots actors to lead.

So where do we go from here? We don’t reject these people outright, they are part of the mess we must compost. But we do challenge the structures that elevate them above others. We remember that the #Fediverse was born from messy, volunteer-driven experiments, not corporate playbooks. We prioritize horizontal spaces, open governance, and trust-based collaboration. And we keep building the #OMN and other alternative structures that reflect these principles natively, not as afterthoughts.

If we don’t, the #openweb becomes just another place where a different few speak for the many, and we lose the path in #NGO mess and the chance to build something genuinely “native”. What we don’t need is more non-native paths, please, we have enough #techshit to compost already. We do need ideas on how to communicate this to the people who need to hear?

#Fiendlyenemy

OMN, best not to get distracted, this isn’t about purity, it’s about direction

In that mess lies compost…

The current state of tech and activist culture is messy, but in that mess lies compost. From arrogance, capitalism, individualism, and collapsing hierarchies, we have the material to grow something new. The #OMN is a seed for this.

Name the mess, Then root around It

Start by openly acknowledging the systemic failures that have plagued past movements. What we’re composting:

Arrogance & Ignorance: Build a culture of humility and learning, encourage peer mentoring and mutual aid over expertise gatekeeping.
Capitalism: Stay non-market by design, resist startup logic, focus on public goods, not monetization. Use #4opens to maintain transparency, participation, and trust.
#StupidIndividualism: Create interdependence to rebuild collective thinking with small working groups and visible shared goals.
Hierarchy Creep: Default to horizontal governance but defacto acknowledge and design for balance leadership, with clear boundaries that keep accountability rooted in community.
Emotional Disconnection: Lean into affective direct action by highlighting lived experiences and personal narratives in media and organizing.

Compost isn’t trash – it’s transformation.

Strengthen a clear, simple core: the #4opens

The #OMN should live and breathe the #4opens:

Open Data – All published media and metadata is accessible.

Open Source – Tools and platforms are forkable and transparent.

Open Process – Governance and decision-making are documented and participatory.

Open Standards – Interoperability with the wider #openweb and Fediverse is core.

This offers a solid, non-dogmatic foundation. It avoids reinventing the wheel, and builds trust – a scarce resource in today’s messy web.

Start small, root deep

Avoid the trap of scaling before grounding by prototyping local hubs, for example with the #OMN projects, support a few active collectives already creating grassroots media. Use these as seeds: real people, telling real stories, using simple #KISS tools. Prioritize tools people already use, like Fediverse platforms.

Create a “Trust Mesh,” not a monolith, the #OMN is not a centralized service. It’s a mesh of trusted nodes.

Use reputation by proximity – if I trust a node, and they trust another, I can begin with soft trust. Encourage federated moderation – each node governs itself, but shares back its reasoning, bridging dialogue over policing. Use hashtags as protocols – this is the native language of grassroots media. Make this a cultural moment – not just a policy critique.

In Summary, compost the rot, don’t hide it, build with: Trust not control – Cooperation not competition – Commons not commerce – Emotion not abstraction. And always – think globally, act locally. The #OMN can’t “win” the game. What it can do is change the rules by being rooted, open, and compost-powered. Let’s get planting.

You don’t need to be a coder or activist to help grow this compost-powered future. Start by talking openly about the mess, with your friends, at work, online. Share radical but grounded ideas like the #4opens. Support or volunteer with grassroots media projects. Use ethical tech alternatives like the Fediverse instead of #dotcons. Practice mutual aid in your community – give and receive help with no strings attached. Turn down the volume on #stupidindividualism and listen to others. Most importantly, show up with humility, curiosity, and a willingness to build together. The world won’t change overnight, but let’s start planting.

What we need is useful compost layer’s for growing native projects

Compost, not illusions, is a first step – A radical look at “light green” tech – For a second step we need a useful compost layer for growing native projects, like the #OMN. What we currently have in most so-called “green technology” promoted through #mainstreaming and #fashernista narratives is not ecological in substance – it’s performative environmentalism, built on omission, distortion, and branding. To help make sense of this mess, let’s use the lenses of the #4opens, the #geekproblem, and the broader #openweb.

The mess is “green” as branding, not substance. Most of today’s #mainstreaming “green” tech, like, electric vehicles (EVs), solar panels, wind turbines – is “green” in aesthetics, not in impact. These are products sold as solutions, but they’re too often rooted in the same extractive, centralized, and opaque paths and systems that caused the problems in the first place. This is the heart of the lie we need to compost, as the needed social change cannot grow from toxic soil, no matter how glossy and plastic the flower appears. If we ignore the roots, we get more illusions.

Watch this critique: The True Cost of Green Tech (YouTube)

The #OMN critique is to move past the false solutions and the broken paths. Yes, light green solutions pushed by institutions and NGOs aren’t inherently bad technologies – but their production, distribution, and governance models are deeply flawed. They violate every principle of the #4opens:

Open data: No honest accounting of full lifecycle impacts.
Open source: Dominated by proprietary, locked-in systems.
Open process: Controlled by corporations and states, with no meaningful public input.
Open standards: Sacrificed for monopolistic vertical integration (e.g., Tesla).

The result is more #techshit – waste and violence hidden behind shiny #PR branding. Even our weak #NGOs point out the brutal costs: resource extraction (cobalt, lithium, rare earths), labour exploitation (child and Uyghur forced labour), and environmental dumping. These costs are buried beneath greenwashed PR aesthetics, making them palatable to consumers but invisible to our shared, and needed critique.

The #geekproblem, the “problem” in much geek culture, is tech as saviour, this is the belief that technology itself is inherently progressive. This takes us down the paths where proposed “fixes” like nuclear follow the same flawed paths: centralized, capital-intensive, top-down systems cloaked in the language of innovation. It’s new wrapping, same old crap.

This is not a path to climate justice. It’s a continuation of the #deathcult – digital colonialism powered by extraction, slavery, and silence. No genuine social or ecological transformation can grow from this poisoned foundation. Where the real cost of “green” tech is not just ignored, it’s deliberately silenced. This silence isn’t accidental; it’s structural. The narrative that we can “buy better things” and consume our way out of crisis is a pacifying lie. It sells comfort, not change.

True ecological technology must be social first. It should grow from transformation, not transaction. We need to compost the lies to grow real alternatives. We must compost the #mainstreaming myths-this is the role of #hashtag stories.

There are meany paths to take, the one I focus on is reclaiming small-scale, peer-produced infrastructure. Using the #4opens to demand transparency, accountability, and participation. Solar panels and EVs have a role, but only when embedded in a radically #degrowth paths: Open governance (#OGB), local, decentralized production (right to repair, community assembly), circular economy (reuse, repurpose, recycle), humanism as non-negotiable (no slavery, no offshoring of harm). It’s a simple, not to say old-fashioned idea of humanistic progress, maybe we can do this better this time, I hope.

Conclusion, please #KISS the illusions goodbye, build the compost heap. Now also, please remember, we are not against technology – we’re against the lies that accompany it. As long as we keep lying about the nature of change, we cannot begin the real work. We need fertile ground – a compost layer for native projects like the #OMN – to push openness and cultivate the genuine ecological thinking we need to grow. It’s way past time for people to lift their heads from worshipping the #deathcult and stop being prats about this.

Enclosure of the openweb

This spirit of the early internet and #WWW – sharing, remixing, collectively creating – is the heart of what we once called the #openweb. It wasn’t perfect, but it was a space of possibilities, commons, where you could take what you needed and leave something behind, hyperlink by hyperlink. The tools were open – #RSS feeds, #APIs, #XMPP, #indymedia were built to bridge between ideas and movements, not walls of monetized algorithmic sludge we have today.

But the #dotcons came. They fenced in the wild garden. What we’re living through now is a digital version of the enclosure of the commons, a #neoliberal land grab dressed in Silicon Valley T-shirts. Just like in 16th-century England, they drew arbitrary lines around our #4opens shared land (data, conversation, culture), declared it private property, and shut the gates. And we, the people, got algorithmic slop in return.

The comparison isn’t metaphor – it’s literal. Just as the landed gentry stole the commons to fuel the industrial revolution, the tech gentry stole our digital commons to feed surveillance capitalism. They did it through legalese, marketing BS, and brute force. We were left outside the firewalls, told to be thankful for “free” services while they harvested our metadata lives to sell back to us as advertisements and social control.

The #techbros didn’t invent this theft. They just updated the tools, the same ideological mess that displaced peasants from their land now displaces communities from their networks and platforms, kills independent sites, closes APIs, and locks away archives behind paywalls. Twitter’s 2023 shutdown of free API access? A textbook enclosure. Hundreds of # fashionista grassroots tools and bots vanished overnight, #Techshit at its most brazen.

And then there’s #RSS – the veins of the old web. Stabbed slowly. First by Facebook, then by Google. For the #fashernistas, the blade fell hardest in 2013 with the death of Google Reader, a quiet coup that pushed most of us into the fenced-off gardens of algorithmic consumption we live so much of our lives in today. The commons didn’t vanish; it was actively destroyed, under the smog of monetization, “engagement,” and corporate “safety.”

This isn’t #progress, it’s theft. The same kind that wears the mask of legitimacy because lawyers and lobbyists made it look neat on paper. The reality is old, it’s a #classwar fought with code instead of clubs, and it’s won because we stopped remembering what common “land” even looked like.

But not everything is lost. The #Fediverse, the #OMN (Open Media Network) still plants seeds in the cracks. #Wikidata, #OpenStreetMap, the #ActivityPub protocol, these are digital hedgerows that survived the scorched earth. They are messy, collaborative, and unmonetized. That’s their strength, that’s what the #fashernistas to often don’t get – they can’t sell what they can’t own.

The #geekproblem here is fatal, in both the grassroots and the #dotcons, too many technologists are blind to the politics in their code. In the #mainstreaming, they build better tools for corporations that destroy the commons. Over and over again. The solution? For the grassroots coders, compost the #techshit, seed something else, and reclaim what was always ours. As when we lift the lid, the #dotcons mess our unthinking #fashernistras, #NGO geeks call the internet is simply a thin veneer on top of what is actually ours, the #openweb

Let’s stop being polite about this. The #closedweb is a crime scene. The platforms we rely on are bonfires of common culture, feeding the engines of the next wave of control. If we don’t remember how we got here, we can’t get out. It’s time to say it plain: The privatized web is a #deathcult, and only a #4opens reboot can bring life back.

An article: https://johl.io/blog/enclosures-and-the-open-web

Ignore the #AI mess, build the #OMN – This is a path we need

Yes, I read the post. And yes, the despair is real. The #openweb is being bulldozed by #GenerativeAI like a forest clear-cut by machines driven not by need, but by greed, profit and power for the #nsatyfew. Yes, the #deathcult of techno-capitalism is running its script to the bitter and dead-end. And yes, I too wonder if we’ll survive this, but as you say we have a path, and it’s not new. It’s simple, it’s human, and it’s working.

It’s called the #Fediverse and the next step is “native” applications on this path like the #OMN – the Open Media Network – and it’s built from the bones and dreams of the old web: #4opens, #KISS principles, and trust-based, #DIY infrastructure. It’s a messy, human soup of tagged data and federated flows where people and content are commons by default, not walled gardens or extractive silos.

The magic? It’s not even in the tech (though that matters). It’s in the “common sense” at the core – Anything in, anything out – mediated by trust. Lossy? Yes. Redundant? Absolutely. But that’s a feature, not a bug. It’s what makes it resilient. The #geekproblem keeps trying to engineer this out, but we need to compost that #techshit into something useful, working tools for real people, growing radical networks of care and change.

To those staring into the digital abyss and seeing only Ozymandias and decay, look sideways, the #Fediverse lives. The #openweb still works. And we’re building new foundations from the compost of the old. We do not need to be swept along with the gray goo of #AI, we can simply not go there, and instead stay here and do the work that is needed.

“I met a traveller from an antique land,
Who said—“Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert. . . . Near them, on the sand,
Half sunk a shattered visage lies, whose frown,
And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,
The hand that mocked them, and the heart that fed;
And on the pedestal, these words appear:
My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings;
Look on my Works, ye Mighty, and despair!
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal Wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away.”
–Percy Bysshe Shelley

And yes, I see it too, we’ve been holding back on our own power, hesitant. Maybe our despair is part of the mess we need to shake ourselves awake from. So I ask what positive path can we walk? What part of the #OMN can we all help compost, code, shape, or share?

Let’s rebuild the net with hands in the soil and eyes on the stars. Because the answer isn’t new. It’s what we’ve always done when things fall apart, we grow.

Tech governance fails, its pastime to compost the mess

The last 20 years of tech governance projects keep missing the mark because they refuse to engage with the real, lived experiences of grassroots activists and community builders. Instead of listening, they fall back into the comfort zones of the #geekproblem: control over collaboration, certainty over-curiosity, code over community.

This is further compounded by the “professional” #NGO class of detached, branding-obsessed, and career-driven #mainstreaming. They claim to serve communities but remain disconnected from the daily struggles, uncertainty, and messiness that define grassroots organizing. These people aren’t building relationships; they’re building resumes.

If they could stop and actually listen to those of us who’ve been in the trenches, those who’ve composted decades of failures and seeded collective wins, they’d quickly see the futility of their rigid, technocratic paths. Real governance isn’t found in plush committee rooms or geeky blockchains. It always emerges from shared struggle, radical trust, and the mess of collaboration.

Until tech governance initiatives shift focus, from control to cooperation, from professional advancement to collective empowerment, they will continue to fail. Worse, they will undermine the communities they claim to support. And let’s be honest, it’s well past time to compost the last ten years of #encryptionist fantasy-making as a first step.

The #OGB (Open Governance Body) was created as a response to this mess making. Rooted in the #4opens principles, it challenges the false promises of #blockchain and #DAOs, which replicate the worst aspects of capitalist market logic, financialization, scarcity, and the concentration of power. Tokens and ledgers are not the future of grassroots governance, they’re its co-option.

We need to actively resist these technological distractions because we know that community is not code. And governance is not a smart contract. We need grassroots paths that reflect gift economies, mutual aid, and social trust, not digital casinos. The truth is that still too many #mainstreaming #NGO types are more interested in branding their codebases and instances than actually serving the messy, vibrant, collective reality of the #openweb as it exists.

That’s why we need the #OMN (Open Media Network). Because governance, media, and tech are not separate, they’re bound together. The #OMN path is about rooting our tools in real communities, building trust over time, and composting the failed hype cycles of the last decade.

If we want an #openweb that matters, we have to dig deeper. Start local. Share power. And stay messy.